The Rain, My Father, and the Vietnam War: a narrative of fragments

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The rain makes me think of my father.

He hated the rain.  He said it brought him back to the jungle—especially a summer rain.  One sticky day by his pool, a thunderclap sounded, a downpour just started.  Muggy days, a sudden rain, startling thunderous booms—my father’s face was twitching.  He had known this place before.

We share associations—loud noises: panic, sticky weather: panic.  All my worst childhood horrors were acted out in shorts.  My father returned to the jungle—yearly—from June until September. I hate the summer.  My father trained me well. We share the same eyes. I saw the panic in his.  He noticed the sadness in mine.

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We were sitting in the cafeteria of the VA hospital.  My father needed psychiatric care.  He suffered from PTSD.  I insisted on calling it shell shock.  He suffered from survivals guilt, too.  I didn’t understand that.  He couldn’t explain.  I hated being there.

I was trying to be a son.  I desperately wanted my father. He said he heard the helicopters on the horizon.  He cried whenever we were there.  I went with him every week.  We got lunch between group therapy sessions.  He was frazzled.  Disabled veterans swarmed from everywhere — a man with missing hands, another without legs, and one whose face was bleached white by some horrible chemical warfare.

I hated coming here.

My father said I should never support a war.  I could never support this carnage, I spouted out proudly with a mouthful of liberal cob salad.  Then the bleach faced man walked in. He looked like a pure vampire with perfect white skin, clumpy white hair, no lips, no eyelids. I stared.  I couldn’t help it.  It was something from a movie suddenly made real.  When he caught me, when our eyes locked, the look in his whole eye-balled stare was: Oh God I’m so sorry.  I didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t mean to stare.  I know I’m a freak. No, please, I didn’t mean to make you…  please forgive me. The bleached man walked out.  I cried in my hands.  My father consoled me. He said I should never support war. I haven’t.

I can’t write about my father.  I don’t know why.  It’s raining.  The rain makes me think about him.  And I can’t seem to put him in words.  I think I miss him.  I think I miss what we could have had if only he were healthy.  I think I miss what was stolen from me by the Vietnam War.  I think I miss what we would have had if proper treatment was more readily available—if the U.S. Army had cared. But I don’t want to get political.  I really don’t care.

I just remembered that my father hated the rain.  He clawed at his chest and wiped the sweat from his brow.  It was August and it was raining.  It reminded him of the jungle.  That’s what he said.  He said it to me.  He whispered it in my ear.  He kept it between us. It was our little secret. Only people like us understand.

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